Saturday, November 02, 2013

Project Planning: Sprint + Kanban + Pomodoro

One thing I like about travel is that it disrupts routine and makes me rethink about life after I get home. One thing which bothers me every year is that I seem to be busy working on various things, but I can’t seems to make sense of what I had done (or achieved). One thing I love about blog is that my thoughts (more specifically my New Year resolution) are recorded and I always look back to see if I have done what I set out to do.

I have 5 things listed for my 2013 New Year resolution: I completed one (travel), will complete another by next week (try hardware hacking), another one is work in progress (travel web app), another one wishful to be completed (stupid idea) and last one is hopeless (make a game).

Kanban + Pomodoro is pretty good in helping me to keep track of productivity and small tasks, but I lose sight of the bigger pictures of things I had done and should be doing next. My wife’s company recently adopted the SCRUM software development framework, and I like the idea of sprint, let see if I can mesh the methodology together.

What do I want to do (or achieve)? I want to work on a stupid idea every quarter of the year, while spending time to maintain and work on Travelopy and Food web app.

I shall split 1 year into 4 quarters, where each quarter has 3 months, and each month will have 2 sprints (2 weeks each). In each month, one sprint shall be used to develop stupid idea, while the other is to develop the core products. By the end of the 4th quarter, I should have 4 stupid ideas in beta release, while the core products should be completed and running as production. Each sprint MUST end with a release (something working in production mode). I will use Kanban + Pomodoro to keep track of the actual tasks and hours spend.

Expected

Actual

Q1

M1

S1

Stupid Idea 1

S2

Core Product

M2

S1

Stupid Idea 1

S2

Core Product

M3

S1

Stupid Idea 1

S2

Core Product

Q2

M1

S1

Stupid Idea 2

S2

Core Product

M2

S1

Stupid Idea 2

S2

Core Product

M3

S1

Stupid Idea 2

S2

Core Product

1 week sprint is too short, and I usually take 1 week to hammer out the code, and another week to polish it for proper release. Why spent 50% of the time on stupid idea and lose focus on core products? I found that if I work on the same project for too long, the enthusiasm and productivity goes down. As much as I like to work 7 days a week, but my mind and body just wouldn’t allow it. Thus I feel a good mix of leisure and work, stupid idea and serious work is important. If I don’t give enough time to stupid idea, nothing will be released thus I won’t feel the accomplishment. I am not sure whether this will work out or not, so let’s try it out.

With this new chart (Project Sprint Chart), I should have a clear view of what am I working on, promising better planning and time management.